Slow Burn Read online

  That had been the first time David had entered Danny’s world, and it had been a strange time for him. Bloodied, ragged, he had been drawn into the club with its spotless windows looking out on the bay, its rows and rows of sleek, beautiful boats. Everyone had stared at him. The ladies in their pristine white, the gentlemen in their leisure suits. He hadn’t been able to look at the people, the men and the women talking about how the riffraff and the refugees were bringing down the neighborhood. He’d looked out at the boats, instead, and decided he wanted a boat right then and there—more, even, than he wanted a life where he could eat all the mouth-watering food being served around him, play tennis on the perfect courts or dive into the pool. Just a boat, that would have made him happy.

  He hadn’t been too fond of Danny’s parents, but he’d met Sly that day, and though he’d had a few opinions about the rest of the lot at the club, he’d known right off that he liked Sly, just as he’d known that one day he would buy a boat.

  Sly knew something about politics. He’d heard of David’s father and even knew his grandfather. He’d bought David a meal, and when he’d seen the boy’s eyes, huge and a little overawed, he’d told him, “America, boy. This is America. Trust me. You reach out and get what you want here. The only difference between you and these folks is that their folks got here and did it for them!” And then he’d winked.

  When David left that day, he’d thought he would never see Danny or Sly again. But two weeks later out of the blue, he’d gotten a scholarship to Danny’s prestigious grade school, and Michael MacCloud had insisted he take it. When he’d been on the outs, an object of fun for some of the rich kids, Danny had been there, stuck to him like glue, his best friend. Luckily he’d been a damned good athlete, and it was amazing what that could do for a poor boy. A refugee. Soon after David’s strange scholarship had come through, David’s younger sister, Reva, had received one, as well. And Danny had been just as great to Reva.

  Spencer had come…later.

  He glanced at his watch again and thought about jogging to Danny’s, then decided to jog home, instead. He would call Danny rather than appear. It would be easier to talk to Spencer on the phone. But maybe Danny would answer himself—still there for some reason—or the housekeeper would be in.

  It was a strange situation. Danny, the kid born into a world of wealth, was a cop. A homicide detective. That was where they had met up again, after years of going their separate ways after high school. Danny wanted to be D.A. someday. Actually, he wanted to go much higher, but he wanted to take the long route into politics. He wanted to know how the working stiff on the street managed; then he wanted to buck the system all the way, not just catching the criminals, but managing to put them away. Spencer had been upset at first about Danny going into homicide, but Danny had been quick to tell her that it was all right. “The cases I’m called to are really safe. Spence. What are the victims going to do to me? They’re already dead!”

  Spencer had reminded him that they had gotten that way through the ill will of others, but it seemed that Spencer really did love and support her man, because Danny was still working homicide. And sometimes the thought that she was there for someone else, not for him, brought a little twist of bitterness to David’s heart. Maybe he hadn’t been quite fair to Spencer Anne Montgomery all those years ago. Or maybe Spencer had changed; he didn’t know. Anyway, it didn’t matter anymore. She was Danny’s wife, and theirs was a good marriage. She and Danny had come from the same world. They knew how to live in it, and also how to fight it. Everyone had probably expected the two of them to wind up together, just as they had shaken their heads at the thought of Spencer Anne Montgomery winding up with David Delgado.

  It was the past. Ancient history. David had his own life. He lived it. But sometimes it seemed that no matter how fast he ran from times gone by, they still caught up with him in the end.

  Hell, where was Danny? The sun was beating down mercilessly on his head. He gave a final look around and started jogging to his own house.

  A good house. Modern, three bedrooms, on the water, his boat docked in the back. He pushed open the front door and strode to the phone.

  “What’s going on? What the hell are you doing here?” Danny demanded.

  The answer came quickly in the form of three hastily fired bullets. One burned by his ear. The other two sank into his middle.

  The figure raced on as Danny Huntington opened his mouth to protest. No sound came. He fell to the ground.

  He didn’t lose consciousness. Not then. He started to crawl. Blood trailed from his wounds, over the dark earth, over tree roots, fallen leaves. Over dirt and pavement.

  He kept crawling. David’s house was straight ahead. The door was open. Sweet Jesus, but he was in pain. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, how could one person lose so much blood? His life, oh, no, not yet, he couldn’t die yet….

  Spencer…

  “Danny!”

  David dropped the receiver he’d just lifted and raced to the doorway. Danny was there, crawling toward him, covered in blood. David started to pick up his best friend, registering almost blankly that Danny had been shot. Years of training sprang into his mind, and he ran for his phone again, dialing the police dispatcher.

  “Three-fifteen!” It was the code for Emergency! Officer needs assistance. “It’s Danny Huntington, and he’s been shot.” He gave his address, then added, “Hurry, damn it!” He’d already said enough, he knew they would hurry for any officer, but this was Danny. In his heart he kept pleading. Christ-oh-God-please-get-here-it’s-really-bad.

  He raced to Danny and cradled his friend in his arms, trying to discern just where the injuries were. Shot, oh, hell, Danny had been shot twice, and he’d lost a lot of blood, but he still had a pulse, his heart was beating, and his lungs were still laboring. If the trauma unit could just get here and get him over to Jackson, they worked miracles there.

  Staunch the blood, you asshole, staunch the blood. You’ve got to keep him alive, David told himself.

  But the bleeding wouldn’t stop, no matter what he did.

  Suddenly Danny’s eyes opened. He reached out a bloody hand, circling it around David’s neck. He tried to form words.

  “Easy, Danny, easy. Help is almost here. You know the cops, you know how fast they come for one of their own.”

  “Spen…cer,” Danny croaked.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll get Spencer. Danny, listen to me, you’ve got to help us. Come on, buddy! Danny, who did this? Who—”

  “Spencer!” Danny managed again. Blood oozed past his lips. He tried to form words again. “Spencer!” Danny mouthed. His eyes were glazing.

  “Hold on, Danny, hold on. Don’t you die on me. I love you, you skinny little rich kid! Danny!”

  He could hear the sirens. He could even hear the chopper blades. He’d said he needed the trauma unit, and they’d believed him. Help would be there in a matter of seconds.

  The med techs arrived, already ripping open packages of bandages, starting an IV. There were hands on David’s shoulders.

  “David!”

  He turned.

  Lieutenant Oppenheim, Danny’s superior, once his own, stood behind him. “David, let them do their work. If anyone can save Danny, it’s these guys. What happened? Who did this?”

  Oppenheim was an old-timer on the force, white-haired, tall, solid as a barrel.

  “I don’t know—he was supposed to meet me on the street. He was late. I came back to call and turned around—”

  He looked at Danny. His friend was on a stretcher. Someone was radioing to the helicopter, and they were choosing a place for it to land.

  “David, what the hell happened. Do you know? Did Danny say?”

  David shook his head, staring at Danny as if he could keep him alive by watching him. “He was supposed to meet me. He was late. I came in to call his house and he was at my door. Just like that.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  David shook his head. “Just Spencer. His
wife’s name.”

  Ten minutes to go! Spencer switched off the water and stepped from the shower, toweling herself strenuously, a slight smile curving her lips. She dropped the towel and picked up her brush and hair dryer, fluffing up the heavy blond mass on her head as best she could in the time she had left. It was going to be perfect, she determined. Just perfect. And she knew just what she was going to do.

  Seconds later she was slipping into a black garter belt with sheer black stockings and a pair of black heels. She found Danny’s black silk tie in the closet and tied in loosely around her neck. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Basic black. Danny had told her once that he liked her in black, and that he would like her best in a black tie and nothing more. Well, that was what he was getting today, because this was going to be special.

  She turned quickly from the mirror and hurried down the stairs, pausing only to make certain that the drapes were drawn.

  They were.

  She rushed into the kitchen, dragged out and filled the ice bucket and grabbed a special bottle of Dom Perignon, then ran to the living room. She threw a lace cover over the Victorian coffee table, plopped the ice bucket on it with the champagne, and raced to the kitchen to fix two crystal bowls of grapes, one bunch green, the other purple. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes. He should be back within five minutes.

  She arranged herself on the coffee table, sitting between the two bowls of grapes, the champagne behind her and just to the left. She jumped up, glanced at her watch again and hurried to the front door. It had to be open. She would ruin the whole effect if she had to open the door for Danny, which she would, since he didn’t carry a key in his jogging shorts.

  She raced to the coffee table and sat down again, legs crossed Indian fashion. She waited, her heart ticking furiously. Did she look sexy? Or foolish? She smiled and decided that it didn’t matter; they would laugh one way or the other. And if they managed the desired result, then anything was worth it! Danny wanted kids so damned badly. He’d been a lonely little boy, which so few people understood. And she felt uncomfortably as if she had failed him in so many ways, and yet she wanted what he wanted more than anything in the world.

  She stared at the door a bit uneasily. What if the mailman opened the door? No, the mailman never came until past noon. Never. UPS? No, they rang the doorbell, they didn’t just walk in.

  A bum? A psychopathic murderer?

  Spencer! she chastised herself. It would be just minutes until Danny came back. Maybe he was having coffee with David. Maybe, being Danny, he’d felt guilty about canceling an appointment. Maybe—despite what he’d said to her—he was even telling David the truth. They were best friends. Always best friends. Nothing had come between them. Not even her.

  She’d never wanted to ruin anyone’s friendship; it was just that she had been so certain that David Delgado was out of her life. That the hurt was gone, that the tempest was over. She’d been so young when she’d fallen for David. She’d never imagined that anything could be as wild as it had been with David, as passionate, as hateful, as…

  “Stop!” she charged herself out loud, closing her eyes tightly. She was sitting all but stark naked on a coffee table waiting for her husband to come home so that they could make a baby together. A baby they both wanted. A husband who was one of the best men in the entire world.

  She was waiting for Danny, but if she didn’t get a grip on herself, she would be remembering the first time she’d ever made love. With his best friend.

  David Delgado.

  “If it’s a girl, I think I like the name Kyra,” she said out loud. “I wonder what Danny thinks of it? He’ll never tell me, I know. He’ll be so happy we’re going to have a baby that he won’t give a damn about a name at all.”

  It had been at Sly’s house. She’d been sixteen years old at the time, and he hadn’t been much older. And, like everything that had happened between them, she’d forced the issue. He never wanted to touch her; she was Sly’s granddaughter, and he’d loved Sly ever since he’d met him. But Terry-Sue was after him big time, and Spencer just hadn’t been able to bear it. She had known what she wanted all the time she was forcing the fight and pushing him into a corner. She had known what she wanted….

  She just hadn’t been prepared for what she had gotten. Or what would follow…

  “If it’s a boy, it will be Daniel, of course,” she said loudly.

  Then she heard the tapping at the door. She smiled. Danny was home, and she really did love him. Together they always dispelled all the demons of the past. Almost made them go away for good.

  “It’s open, come right in!” she called.

  The door swung inward, and she saw a tall silhouette framed there against the rising sun. He took a step into the house, and even before she saw his features, she knew he was all wrong, too tall, too broad shouldered to be Danny, wire muscled, tense—and dark where Danny was blond. This man had ebony dark hair and bronzed, taut features.

  “David!” she gasped. Her breathing seemed to cease, her heart to stop beating. She felt like an idiot, cross-legged, naked on the table—her black tie perfectly in place.

  She leaped up and all but hurled herself across the room, tearing an afghan from the back of a sofa and wrapping herself in it, then staring at the man who was staring at her in return. She wished that she could crawl beneath the coffee table.

  Then she started babbling. “I’m—ah, I was just waiting for Danny to get back. He was going to talk to you. Did you miss him? There’s coffee in the kitchen. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go get dressed—”

  “Spencer,” he said. Just that, and nothing more. His tone was level, but it held a wealth of agony. He didn’t tease her, didn’t even make an offhand comment. He just stared at her, and suddenly she felt a gripping chill. And she knew. She knew from the raspy sound of his voice, from the look in his eyes.

  “Danny?” she whispered. And then it all fell into place. There were red splashes on the Marlins tank top he wore, on the white trim of his black jogging shorts. And there were tears in David’s eyes. Tears. The only time she’d ever seen David Delgado with tears in his eyes was the day they’d buried Michael MacCloud….

  “Danny. Oh, my God. Danny!” she breathed. She’d never been so afraid in her whole life. She was going to be sick; the world was starting to spin; it was going black.

  “Spencer, you’ve got to come with me. Quickly.”

  She heard the words, but just barely. She wanted to fight the encroaching darkness, to go with him. No good. Consciousness was slipping away from her. Black heels, stockings, tie and afghan, she sank to the floor, and everything went black, just as if someone had turned out a light….

  She made it to the hospital in time. David had brought her to with a cool cloth and a few shakes, and she had immediately wished that she could plummet back into the darkness. Danny hadn’t even been at work! He hadn’t been in uniform, or even on plainsclothes duty.

  “Spencer, he’s alive. Come on, hurry.”

  That had brought her up short. She’d found some strength and some dignity and taken only minutes to dress. A police escort had brought them to Jackson Memorial in less than ten minutes.

  Danny had already been taken into surgery. For hours she and David paced the hospital corridors, drinking bad coffee out of paper cups from a machine, waiting.

  Danny lived. Amazingly, he survived the surgery. The list of things the bullets had done to his body was endless, ripped and torn pancreas, liver. Damaged lungs and intestines.

  But he held on. For days he held on. Day by day, she held his hand as he lay in the trauma unit.

  Then, three weeks to the day after the shooting, the doctors told her that he had gone into a coma. David was there with her, standing behind her along with Sly as they explained what had happened, what she hadn’t wanted to understand. None of the injuries to his body had really mattered. Somehow an infection had gotten started and spread to his brain. And the brain was the one thing
they absolutely couldn’t bring back. So Danny was alive. But he was dead. They wanted her permission to take him off the machines.

  She signed the papers. And she sat by him again in the hospital. She held his hand. His hand looked so good! So strong, so normal! Long, still bronzed fingers. Clipped nails. Those hands had touched her, loved her. She could still draw them to her face, feel his knuckles against her cheeks. It wasn’t fair that he should still be the same….

  Four weeks after the shooting, he drew his last breath. David was with her again, not speaking, just watching, waiting. He’d been there all along. There were always cops around, too—waiting, praying, guarding. David wasn’t a cop anymore, but it didn’t seem to matter. He’d let his business go straight to hell to sit with Danny. With her. He was silent most of the time. But he was there. And the past remained buried. A silent truce held between them. They both loved Danny, and for his sake, everything else was set aside. Her family came; her friends came. They offered words of comfort, words that, despite the very best of intentions, could do little. David’s silent presence was the only thing that mattered. She heard him talking sometimes to the cops who came. They were completely baffled as to who had done this to Danny. It hadn’t even really hit her yet that he was going to die, was already dead in the only way that mattered. She still thought that he would twist, turn, move, listen to her, awaken. They had said that he was brain-dead, but his heart was so strong. It kept beating. And David kept his quiet vigil behind her.

  And after it was over, he was there to hold her when they came for the body, when she shrieked out, unable, after everything, to believe that Danny was really gone.

  David was the one to give the eulogy when hundreds of people appeared at Danny’s funeral. He talked about Danny the boy, and Danny the man, and what Danny had meant to those who loved him. He talked about how he’d been a good cop, too, always there, the most moral man David had ever met, the finest.